2019 marks a new era for UNIFY Gathering as we move to a brand-new site after four years at the Tarwin Lower Recreation Reserve. We’re still in the same area, just a few kilometres up the road, and we’re part of the same local community that has supported us to this point. As always, we love to be transparent with you all on why we do things. So, we’d like to explain where this decision came from, and what it means for the future of UNIFY.

Put simply, we are moving to a new site so we can ensure that UNIFY can deliver a higher quality of festival experience and that we can do so for as long as possible.

After our 2017 event, we realised that we weren’t going to be able to use the Recreation Centre forever. We didn’t have enough camping space, or enough space to provide the quality of toilets, coverage, food elements, market stalls etc. that we wanted to add in to the festival. Everything we wanted to do was hindered by space. Even our stage was smaller than we wanted, which was making it hard for us to provide a great backstage/production for the calibre of artists we were attracting. We tried all kinds of models to make the Recreation Centre work, and we tried to get access to more space to run things. But every way we looked at it, and everything we tried, we couldn’t see a future where we could make it work.

We found this new location mid-2017 and we planned our move from then. It’s a private farm and we have a long-term lease with full support from our local community. The owner is a friend who is involved with the Recreation Centre and has helped us from the start. We’ve started building the site and planning out how to use it to the best of our ability.

The new site was a blank canvas. Do you know how amazing that felt?

We started dreaming of how we could build a really big stage, a beautiful backstage for the artists, roads and access points that made everything easier. Then we thought about rides, markets, toilets, shade and basically building ourselves a Heavy Music Wonderland. We thought about all the people that requested better camping options and camper vans.

And mostly, we dreamed of doing this event long term. We want something that is sustainable and can improve every single year. This was our way of achieving that. There are many incredible camping events around the world, and we’ve done our research into what made those so successful and sustainable. This is the move that allows us to be that as well.

Photo by Neal Walters

These are some of the things our new site will be upgraded with:

The option to arrive and camp on site a day earlier.

A more spacious and comfortable campsite.

Increased community resources across the campsite (Security, The Lighthouse, UNITY Crew)

More toilets across the entire festival site.

Unisex, Male and Female toilet options.

A larger team maintaining the toilets across the weekend.

A more streamline entry process to get you into the festival.

Increasing our ticket processing team to get your wristbands much quicker.

A larger ‘Corner Store’ in the campsite.

More food vendors

For the first time ever, you will have the option to bring a campervan on site if you have one!

We’ve got a whole lot more to tell you between now and Thursday August 9, and we hope you’re just as excited as we are.